Yevgenia Bosch (Ukrainian: Євгенія Богданівна (Готлібівна) Бош; Russian: Евге́ния Богда́новна (Го́тлибовна) Бош) (Yevgenia Bogdanovna (Gotlibovna) Bosch), also known as Evgenia Bosh, Evgenia Bogtdanovna Bosch or Evheniya Bohdanivna Bosch [her Russian patronym (Bogdanovna - "God's gift") is not directly translated from her Russified German patronim (Gotlibovna - "God's love")] (August 1879 – 5 January 1925) was a Bolshevik activist, politician, and member of the Soviet government in Ukraine during the revolutionary period in the early 20th century.

Yevgenia Bosch is sometimes considered the first modern woman leader of a national government,[1] having been Minister of Interior and at one point the Acting Leader of the provisional Soviet government of Ukraine in 1917. For that reason she is also sometimes considered the first Prime Minister of independent Ukraine, but her memory lacks wide knowledge or even recognition, due to what is alleged to have been a deliberate historical suppression by Stalin's government because of her sympathy with the opposition.[2]

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Officially Bosch was born in Ochakiv, in the Kherson Governorate of the Russian Empire, but some records have another information - village of Adjigol, Odessa uyezd, Kherson Governorate[3] in a family of a German colonist, mechanic, and landowner Gotlieb Meisch and Bessarabian noblewoman Maria Krusser. Yevgenia Bosch was the fifth and the last born child in family. Soon after the death of Gotlieb Meisch, Maria Krusser married her husband's brother Theodore Meisch, for three years Yevgenia attended Voznesensk Female Gymnasium, after which due to her health conditions she worked for her stepfather as a secretary. Being stuck in parents household Yevgenia sought means to leave, her older brother Oleksiy acquainted her with his friend Peter Bosch who was an owner of a local small wagon shop. At 16 Yevgenia married Bosch and later gives birth to two daughters.

According to another source, Evgenia Bosch was born in Ukraine, to Gottlieb Meisch, an ethnic German immigrant from Luxembourg and his Moldavian wife. Bosch's parents quarrelled often and her childhood was reportedly an unhappy one,[4] she was educated at the Voznesensk women’s gymnasium.[5] At age 17, her parents attempted to arrange her marriage to an older man, but she rebelled and married a bourgeois businessman named Petr Bosch, they had two children.[4]

Bosch had a growing interest in radical politics, she had limited involvement with the Social Democrats. In 1901, at 22, she became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and after the II Party Congress became a bolshevik. She tried to educate herself while raising her two daughters, she joined the Bolshevik faction in 1903. In the meantime, her older sister, Elena Rozmirovich, was a dedicated revolutionary, the Bosch house was searched by the police for illegal political literature in 1906. The police search was unsuccessful, but Bosch left her husband and fled to Kiev, where she joined the revolutionary underground; in 1907 she divorced her husband and moved to Kiev where Bosch lived at vulytsia Velyka Pidvalna, 25 (today vulytsia Yaroslaviv Val).

In Kiev she established contact with local bolshevik faction and together with her younger sister Elena Rozmirovich (future wife of Nikolai Krylenko, chekist) conducted underground revolutionary activities. Much of the Kiev group was arrested and exiled in 1910, but Bosch remained in Kiev and found a lover and revolutionary partner in Georgy Pyatakov. Bosch was head of the Kiev Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Worker’s Party (RSDRP), after the revolution she became Secretary of Regional Committee of RSDRP(B). Bosch and Pyatakov led the Kiev committee until their arrest and exile to Siberia in 1912.[4]

In April 1912 she was arrested and imprisoned in one of the Yekaterinoslav's prisons. There her health worsened as she had inborn heart and lung disease, the Kiev Court Chamber convicted her to life-term exile in Siberia while she suffered from tuberculosis.

Afterwards, Bosh and Piatakov made their way to Switzerland where an emigre group of revolutionaries was active. Bosh accepted Lenin’s invitation and attended the conference of Russian revolutionaries in Bern in 1915 (the Bern conference), she was initially opposed to Lenin's desire to urge the proletariat towards revolution. Still in Switzerland, together with Georgy Pyatakov they established the so-called Baugy group (Baugy is a suburb of Lausanne) which included Nikolai Bukharin, G.Krylenko and others, and stood in opposition to Lenin concerning the nationalities factor. Her newspaper Social Democratic Voice argued:

We believe that the development of productive forces and social power of the proletariat have not reached the level at which the working class could carry out the socialist revolution.[6]

After the February Revolution, they returned to what was then the Russian Republic, originally aiming at organizing an opposition to Lenin, after the April conference of the RSDLP, Bosch came to change her position, adhering to Lenin's ideas. Her reconciliation with Lenin cost her her marriage, she was elected chairman of a districtal (okrug) Party Committee and then of a provincial (oblast) Party Committee in the Southwestern Krai.

Bosch was instrumental in launching the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (December 11–12, 1917, Kharkiv), at this Congress, the Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed to be the Soviet Republic, and its membership in a federation with Soviet Russia was also declared. The Congress also denounced the Tsentralna Rada as well as its laws and instructions, the decrees of the Petrograd Council of People’s Commissars extended to Ukraine and an official alliance with the Russia Red Army was declared.[5]

She was persuaded to support Lenin's direction for the Bolsheviks, and in 1917 she went to Russia, and became a popular agitator, motivating troops along the south-western border of Ukraine to support the Bolsheviks; in March she led an army unit in Kiev as the revolutionaries battled the Provisional Government that was installed in Russia after the fall of the Romanovs. Bosch became Minister of the Interior when the Reds took control of the government in January 1918,[4] as Soviet Ukraine's first Minister of the Interior and Head of the Secret Police, Evgenia Bosch was responsible for taking direct charge of the Soviet fight against the bourgeois business owners' and landlords’ counter-revolution.[6]

In March, Bosch was outraged when the Soviets signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, which gave control of territories in western Ukraine to Germany. Bosch resigned her government post in protest and left Russia for Ukraine to fight the German advance into Ukraine, she enlisted in the Antonov-Ovseenko Red Army with Pyatakov and her daughter Maria. She became ill with tuberculosis and heart disease, however, and after several months of recuperation, she left Ukraine for Russia, where she filled political and military administrative posts for the next few years as the civil war continued.[4]

She was harshly critical of the bureaucratic group she saw controlling the Soviet government, she was a supporter of Leon Trotsky, and signed the Platform of the 46, the first official statement by the opposition to Joseph Stalin. She wrote a memoir, A Year of Struggle, published posthumously in 1925. Bosch fell out of favour with the Joseph Stalin-Nikolai Bukharin leadership; in 1924, she succumbed to despair after hearing that Trotsky had been forced to resign as leader of the Red Army, as well as in pain from her heart condition and tuberculosis, and she died by suicide.[4][8] Her suicide was met with an immediate, deliberate effort by the Soviet government to suppress official acknowledgement of her death by cancelling public funeral rites:

The more rigorous comrades argued that suicide, however justified it might be by incurable illness, remained an act of indiscipline. Besides, in this particular case suicide was a proof of Oppositional leanings.[2]

A large suspension bridge over the Dnieper in Kiev was named in Bosch's honour when it was raised in 1925. Yevgeniya Bosch Bridge, which existed in Kiev from 1925 to 1941, was named after her, the bridge was constructed by Evgeny Paton on the base of the remnants of Nicholas Chain Bridge blown up by retreating Polish troops in 1920. The bridge was destroyed during World War II, the site of the Bosch bridge is now the location of the Metro Bridge.[9]

A lot of other important objects in Ukraine and other places in the Soviet Union were given her name (most of them were renamed after 1991).

Her daughter Olha married Yuriy Kotsyubynsky and gave birth to Oleh Yuriyovych Kotsyubynsky.

1.
People's Secretariat
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The Peoples Secretariat of Ukraine was the executive body of the Provisional Central Executive Committee of Soviets in Ukraine. The government claimed the same jurisdiction over Ukraine as the General Secretariat, the new party was directed by its Chief Committee that was headed by Yevgenia Bosch. The government was elected at the 1st All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets in Kharkiv, at first no agreement was reached who would be heading the government, however it was decided that for the time being the chair will belong to the Secretary of Internal Affairs. The following Secretariat was located in Kharkiv and after taking Kiev by the Red Army in late January 1918 moved to Kiev, on March 4,1918 some changes took place in the cabinet as Bosch resigned in protest to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. The same day finally was appointed the first chairman of Peoples Secretariat Skrypnyk, Skrypnyk was also appointed the Secretary of Trade and Industry. The secretary of Internal Affairs was elected Yevhen Neronovych, Labor Affairs - Ivan Klymenko, Social Security - Georgiy Lapchinsky, the Soviet government relocated to Yekaterinoslav and with the advance of the Central Powers to Taganrog in April 1918. On March 7,1918 the Secretariat of Military Affairs was reformed into the triumvirate as the Petrograd sovnarkom and included Vladimir Antonov, Antonov was appointed the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Ukrainian military. Although the government had its own Secretariat of Internal Affairs the state security was conducted by the All-Russian Extraordinary Committee, both Bosch and Antonov took orders only from Lenin as the last one performed duties of Peoples Commissar of Russia and Ukraine. However, with the advance of the forces of Central Rada and Central Powers. On April 4,1918 Joseph Stalin telegraphed Volodymyr Zatonsky with the following, on April 6 Skrypnyk sent his answer to the Sovnarkom and the All Russian Central Executive Committee where he recited Stalins words. Further Skrypnyk said, We have to announce the most decisive protest against the speech of Narkom Stalin, selected groups and parts of the Russian Federation that fragment away from it now propose to the Ukrainian Peoples Republic to create the South Soviet Federation. Extraordinary Authorized Embassy of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Federation, on April 18,1918 it was disbanded and reorganized together with the Central Executive Committee into the Povstanburo. The bureau consisted of nine members, four were bolsheviks, four - left SRs (Serhiy Mstyslavsky, Opanas Sieverov-Odoyevsky, M. S

2.
Yuriy Kotsiubynsky
–
Yuriy Kotsiubynsky was a Bolshevik politician, activist, member of the Soviet government in Ukraine, one of the co-founders of Red Cossacks Army of Ukrainian Republic. Kotsiubynsky can be classified as a red cossack, Yuriy, like his father Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, was born in Vinnytsia, Podolia Governorate. He studied in the Chernihiv Gymnasium, in 1913, Yuriy joined the Bolsheviks and in 1916 was mobilized to the Russian Imperial Army. Later he studied in school of praporshchiks in Odessa and serving in Petrograd, in the capital Kotsiubynsky led an anti-war agitation among soldiers for which he was arrested on several occasions by the Provisional Government. With his future brother-in-law Vitaly Primakov Kotsiubynsky took active participation in storming of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution, later he headed the Red Guard detachment of Moscow-Narva Distinct against the forces of Kerensky - Krasnov, being also the commandant of the mentioned district. In December 1917 he became a deputy of Peoples Secretary of Military Affairs, in reality the army was led by Muraviov who was subordinated to Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko. In March 1918 Kotsiubynsky was elected to the Central Executive Committee, in July 1918 Kotsyubysnky joined the All Ukrainian Central Military revkom. Since November 1918 became a member of the reinstated Ukrainian Bolshevik government, during 1919-1920 Kotsiubynsky headed several regional party offices in Chernihiv and Poltava. From April to November 1919 he was a chairman of the Chernigov Governorate executive committee, since 1920 he held diplomatic missions to Austria and Poland until 1930. In 1922-23 he was an auditor of Marxist courses at the Socialist Academy, in 1930 Kotsiubynsky became the deputy of head of Derzhplan, however in September 1933 he occupied the chair of Derzhplan and became the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian sovnarkom. During these last several years he was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in November 1934, Kotsiubynsky was fired from his job losing his membership in the Central Committee. In February 1935, he was arrested while being charged with anti-Soviet activities, in March 1935 he was excluded from the Party. In October 1936 Kotsiubynsky was arrested again while in exile and transferred to Kiev, on March 8,1937 he was convicted by the Collegiate of the Soviet Supreme Court and executed by firing squad later the same day. In December 1955 he was rehabilitated, there exist the Letter without envelope to Kotsiubynsky from Serhiy Okhrymenko in which the Ukrainian scientist blames him in bloody crimes against his own people. Handbook on history of the Communist Party Small Dictionary of history of Ukraine Profile at personalities Yu. Kotsyubynsky on the service at the Red commissars

3.
Mykola Skrypnyk
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Mykola Oleksiyovych Skrypnyk was a Ukrainian Bolshevik leader who was a proponent of the Ukrainian Republics independence, and led the cultural Ukrainization effort in Soviet Ukraine. When the policy was reversed and he was removed from his position and he also was the Head of the Ukrainian Peoples Commissariat, the post of the todays Prime-Minister. Skrypnyk was born in the village Yasynuvata of Bakhmut uyezd, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, at first he studied at the Barvinkove elementary school, then realschules of the cities Izium and Kursk. While studying at Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology, he was arrested on charges in 1901. Originally member of the Saint Petersburg Hromada society, Skrypnyk left it, Skrypnyk was eventually excluded from the Institute. He was arrested fifteen times, exiled seven times, and at one point he was sentenced to death, in 1913 Skrypnyk was an editor of the Bolsheviks legal magazine Issues of Insurance and in 1914 was a member of the editorial collegiate of the Pravda newspaper. After the February Revolution Skrypnyk arrived from one of his exiles to Morshansk to Petrograd where he was elected as a secretary of the Central Council of Factories Committees, during the October Revolution Skrypnyk was a member of the MilRevKom of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies. In December 1917, Skrypnyk was elected in absentia to the first Bolshevik government of Ukraine in Kharkiv and he replaced at that assignment Yevgenia Bogdan Bosch, daughter of a German immigrant. But in July, a Moscow congress of Ukrainian Bolsheviks rescinded the resolution, Skrypnyk worked for the Cheka secret police during the winter of 1918–19, then returned to Ukraine as Peoples Commissar of Worker-Peasant Inspection, and Internal Affairs. Having lost this battle, Skrypnyk and other autonomists would turn their attention towards culture, Skrypnyk was Commissar of Justice between 1922 and 1927. Skrypnyk was appointed head of the Ukrainian Commissariat of Education in 1927 and he convinced the Central Committee of the CPU, to introduce the policy of Ukrainization, encouraging Ukrainian culture and literature. He worked for this cause with almost obsessive zeal, and despite a lack of teachers and textbooks and in the face of bureaucratic resistance, Ukrainian language was institutionalized in the schools and society, and literacy rates reached a very high level. Skrypnyk convened an international Orthographic Conference in Kharkiv in 1927, hosting delegates from Soviet, the conference settled on a compromise between Soviet and Galician orthographies, and published the first standardized Ukrainian alphabet accepted in all of Ukraine. The Kharkiv orthography, or Skrypnykivka, was adopted in 1928. In January 1933, Stalin sent Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine, with free rein to centralize the power of Moscow, Skrypnyk was removed as head of Education. In June, he and his nefarious policies were publicly discredited, rather than recant, on 7 July he shot himself at his desk at his apartment in Derzhprom at Dzerzhynsky Square. During the remainder of the 1930s, Skrypnyks forced Ukrainization was reversed, Peoples Secretariat, the first government of the Soviet Ukraine Chernetsky, Vitaly. The NKVD File of Mykhaylo Drai-Khmara, includes a concise biography of Skrypnyk in annotation no.25

4.
Ochakiv
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Ochakiv also known as Ochakov, Vozia, and Alektor is a small city in Mykolaiv Oblast of southern Ukraine. Serving as the center of Ochakiv Raion, the city itself does not belong to the raion and is designated as a city of regional significance. Population,14, 491 For many years the city-fortress served as a capital of the Ottoman province, the land, where the Ochakov is located, was inhabited by Thracians and Scythians in ancient times. It was known as a part of Great Scythia, in the 7th and 6th centuries BC, Greek colonists had founded a commercial colony town Alektor near the Thracian coast. Archaeological excavations also show that near the area was the old Milesian colony of Pontic Olbia, in the 1st century BC, Alektor became a Roman colony and part of Roman empire. It was a part of the Romanians ethnogenesis space and a place of passage for many migratory people, as a result of the migrations, the city fell and the inhabitants lived in small settlements built on the shores of Bug and Dnieper Rivers. In the Middle Ages the place was named Vozia by Romanians, the name is supposed to come from a plant known in Romanian as bozii/bozia, a medicinal herb very often found there. The territory was a part of the Moldavian Berladnici rulership and it fell under Tatar domination in the time of the Mongol invasion of Europe. Alexandru cel Bun, the Moldavias ruler and his ally Vitovt or Vytautas, Lithuanias leader, had freed the Vozia territory, later the stronghold will be mentioned in Russian chronics as Dashev. In the 14th century AD the Senarega brothers, Genovese merchants and warriors, had settled a castle at the place called Lerici, very close to Vozia city. It was a point for commerce with Romanians and Tatars. In 1492 Crimean Tatars took Vozia from the Moldavians and named it Özü-Cale, the name was also very similar to Romanian Vozia. It also referred to the city as Kara-Kerman as an opposite to Cetatea Albă, also taken by the Tatars and that city was also renamed as Ak-Kerman, today Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi. In 1493 the fortress was taken by the Moldavians cossacks of Bohdan Gliński, due to its strategic location the fortress for a long time was a site of contest between the Moldavia, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Moldavias ally Zaporizhian Sich, and Ottoman Empire. Khadjibey later became a centre and left from Özi one. In 1600 Mihai Viteazul of Valahia freed the city for a short time, giovanni Battista Malbi noted in 1620 that the town and the land of Vozia, even ruled by the Tatars, were inhabited by Romanians. The same ethnic note was made by Niccolo Barsi from Lucca in the same century. Daniel Krmann, monk from Poltava, wrote that outside the Turks and Tatars, the conquereres of the Vozia, the city was inhabited by Moldavians, the Russian Empire besieged Ochakiv in 1737, regarding it as the main obstacle to the possession of the Black Sea littoral

5.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation

6.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality

7.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states

8.
Russia
–
Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians

9.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity

10.
Communist Party of Ukraine (Soviet Union)
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The Communist Party of Ukraine, known as the Communist Party of Ukraine until 1952, was the Ukrainian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Communist Party of Ukraine was created in July 1918 in Moscow, after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Bolshevik faction Social-Democracy of Ukraine was forced to dissolve as all Bolsheviks were forced out of Ukraine. On October 13,1952 the party officially was renamed as the Communist Party of Ukraine, on August 26,1991 the Communist Party was outlawed in Ukraine. Different sectors reconstituted themselves in different parties, the remaining members either changed political direction or created their own left-wing parties such as the Vitrenko bloc, Social-Democratic party, and others. Beside full members there also were candidate to the committee, the initial composition included Yan Hamarnik, Dmitriy Lebed, Mikhail Mayorov, Mykola Skrypnyk, Petro Slynko, Yakov Yakovlev. On September 9,1918 Mayorov and Slynko replaced Kertvelishvili and Farbman as full members, during World War II on October 2,1942 there was created the Illegal Central Committee of the Party consisting of 17 members. The committee was dissolved on June 29,1943, among the members of the committee were such personalities as Sydir Kovpak, Leonid Korniets, Oleksiy Fedorov, and others. The party had its own Politburo created on March 6,1919, on September 25,1952 the committee was renamed into the Bureau of the Central Committee of CPU, and in October the same year as the Bureau of the CC CPU. On October 10,1952 it became the Presidium of the CC CPU, on June 26,1966 again the bureau was finally left with its original name as the Politburo of the CC CPU. At first it consisted of five members and later one was added. The first Politburo included Andriy Bubnov, Emanuel Kviring, Volodymyr Mescheriakov, Heorhiy Pyatakov, Christian Rakovsky, from March 23 until April 15,1920 there was elected a Provisional Bureau which the next day was ratified by the Russian Communist Party. Along with Politburo the party like its Russian counterpart had its own Orgburo that was created the day as Politburo. The party was headed by its secretary, the position was highly influential and often was considered to be more important than the head of state. The following list is composed of the secretary of the Central Committee of the party who were the leaders of the Party, the position also was changing names between being called the First Secretary or the General Secretary, depending on a political atmosphere in the Soviet Union. The position was not officially of the head of state, but certainly was very influential, Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk There were 28 Congresses with the last one consisting out of two stages. There also were three consolidated conferences of the party from 1926 to 1932, at the second stage of the last Congress there were 273 members in the Central Committee. This took place in Moscow and decided to call for preparations for an uprising against the occupying Central Powers forces. There were only 15 members in the Central Committee and six candidates, promoted to members, Mikhail Mayorov and Pyotr Slinko This also took place in Moscow

11.
Georgy Pyatakov
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Georgy Leonidovich Pyatakov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader during the Russian Revolution, and member of the Left Opposition. Pyatakov was born August 6,1890 in the settlement of the Mariinsky sugar factory which was owned by his father and he started political activity as an anarchist while he was in secondary school, but joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1910. In 1912 he joined the Bolshevik faction and he was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1912 with his partner, Evgenia Bosh, but they soon escaped and made their way to Switzerland where they joined the émigré revolutionary community. Pyatakov and Bosh remained together until she committed suicide in 1925 due to poor health. His opinion on some points of the theory and tactics of the revolutionary struggle contradicted that of the party Central Committee, Pyatakov lived in Ukraine from March 1917, heading the Kiev Committee of the RSDLP. He was repeatedly elected a member of the Central Committee, but he opposed the Ukrainian nationalists and stood for the transfer of power to the Soviets of Worker’s, Peasant’s and Soldier’s Deputies in Ukraine. He also headed the Kiev Military-Revolutionary Committee and he declared that the party had to throw out the idea of self-identification of every nation. He stood on the anti-chauvinistic international principles, in 1918 Pyatakov was a leader of a group of Left Communists in Ukraine. He was one of the initiators of Communist Party of Ukraine formation, at the First Congress of CPU in Moscow, Pyatokov was elected the Central Committee secretary, and headed the unsuccessful anti-Hetman rebellion in August 1918. In March 1919 he attended the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party and he collaborated with Nikolai Bukharin by co-authoring the chapter on The Economic Categories of Capitalism in the Transition Period in The Economics of the Transformation Period, published in 1920. The likeness of Pyatakov’s Left-Communist views and Trotsky’s ideas led to his participation in all the opposition trends then designated as Trotskyist. He was expelled from the party for belonging to the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc, but was reinstated in 1928 after he renounced Trotskyism and he was appointed Chairman of the Board of the USSR State Bank in 1929 holding the position for a year. In 1936 he was accused of anti-party and anti-Soviet activity. At his trial, he was accused of conspiring with Trotsky in connection with the case of the so-called Parallel anti-Soviet Party Centre, to overthrow the Soviet Government. He was accused of entering into a conspiracy with the Nazis with the intent of seizing power in the Soviet Union, the prosecution presented evidence that he had secretly met with Trotsky in Norway for these purposes. However, it emerged that the Oslo airdrome reported that no foreign planes had arrived at the time of Pyatakovs supposed visit to Trotsky. On January 30,1937, he was sentenced to death, Pyatakov was rehabilitated posthumously in 1988, that is not until Gorbachevs time. Biography Mentioning of Leonid Pyatakov Biography of his brother Leonid

12.
Alma mater
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Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university or college. In modern usage, it is a school or university which an individual has attended, the phrase is variously translated as nourishing mother, nursing mother, or fostering mother, suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Before its modern usage, Alma mater was a title in Latin for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele. The source of its current use is the motto, Alma Mater Studiorum, of the oldest university in continuous operation in the Western world and it is related to the term alumnus, denoting a university graduate, which literally means a nursling or one who is nourished. The phrase can also denote a song or hymn associated with a school, although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele, Venus, and other mother goddesses, it was not frequently used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. Alma Redemptoris Mater is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary, the earliest documented English use of the term to refer to a university is in 1600, when University of Cambridge printer John Legate began using an emblem for the universitys press. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is often cited in 1710, many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name. The University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, has been called the Alma Mater of the Nation because of its ties to the founding of the United States. At Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses, outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website

13.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster

14.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi

15.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution

16.
Kherson Governorate
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The Kherson Governorate or Government of Kherson was a guberniya, or administrative territorial unit, between the Dnieper and Dniester Rivers, of the Russian Empire. It was one of three created in 1802 when the Novorossiya guberniya was abolished. It was known as the Nikolayev Governorate until 1803, when Kherson replaced Nikolayev as the governorates capital, the economy of the governorate was mainly based on agriculture. During the grain harvest, thousands of laborers from the parts of the Empire found work in the area. The industrial part of the economy, consisting primarily of flour milling, distilling, metalworking industry, iron mining, beet-sugar processing, from 1809, the governorate consisted of five uyezds, Kherson, Aleksandriya, Ovidiopol, Tiraspol, and Yelisavetgrad. The city of Odessa carried a special status, in 1825, The Odessa uyezd was added into the territorial division of the Kherson Governorate. A seventh uyezd — Bobrynets, existed from 1828 to 1865, in 1920, while being under Soviet Ukrainian rule, the governorates territory,70,600 km2, was divided to form the newer Odessa Governorate. The Kherson Governorate was renamed Mykolaiv Governorate in 1921, and in 1922 - merged with the Odessa Governorate, in 1925, the Odessa Governorate was abolished, and its territory was divided into six okruhas, Kherson, Kryvyi Rih, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Pershotravneve, and Zinoviivske. In 1932, much of this territory was incorporated into the new Odessa Oblast, now a division of the modern Ukrainian nation. The gubernia had a population of about 245,000 in 1812,893,000 in 1851,1,330,000 in 1863,2,027,000 in 1885,2,733,600 in 1897, and 3,744,600 in 1914. In the 1850s it consisted of Ukrainians, Romanians, Russians, Jews, Germans, Bulgarians, Poles, Greeks, in 1914, Ukrainians composed only 53% of the population, while Russians made up 22% and Jews - 12%. Urban dwellers made up 10 to 20 percent of the population until the 1850s, after which the proportion of urban dwellers increased, migration within the Russian Empire mainly accounted for the areas population growth, with 46% of the population born outside of the governorate in 1897. Kherson regional universal science library of Oles Honchar

17.
Settler
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A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally from a culture, as opposed to nomads who share. Settlements are often built on land already claimed or owned by another group, many times settlers are backed by governments or large countries. One can witness how settlers very often occupied land previously home to long-established peoples, the word settler was not originally usually used in relation to free labour immigrants, such as slaves, indentured labourers, or convicts. In United States history it refers to people who helped to settle new lands. In this usage, pioneers are usually among the first to an area, whereas settlers can arrive after first settlement and this correlates with the work of military pioneers who were tasked with construction of camps before the main body of troops would arrive at the designated campsite. In Imperial Russia, the government invited Russians or foreign nationals to settle in sparsely populated lands, see, e. g. articles Slavo-Serbia, Volga German, Volhynia, Russians in Kazakhstan. In the Middle East, there are a number of references to various squatter, among those, Iraq – the Arabization program of the Baath Party in the late 1970s in North Iraq, which aimed at settling Arab populations instead of Kurds following the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War. Israel – Israelis who moved to areas captured during the Six-Day War in 1967 are termed Israeli settlers, in recent Israeli settlers have been settling in Palestinian territory such as the Gaza Strip and West Bank. However, this has caused political unrest and many settlers are forcibly removed from their settlements by the Israeli government, Syria – In recent times, Arab settlers have also moved in large numbers to ethnic minority areas, such as northeast Syria. Women and children experience violence in these highly dangerous ares because of the conflict, many natives face displacement when new settlements are established. During 1948 Palestine war, in which Israel was created, over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, oftentimes fences or walls are built preventing the natives from traveling back onto the land. Settlements make it difficult for native people to continue their work. For example, if the settlers take part of the land which the trees grow on then the natives no longer have access to those olive trees. Many are met with violence when they try to get the things they need from the land, settlers in hypothetical societies, such as on other planets, often feature in science fiction or fantasy fiction and/or video games. Mascot for Texas Womans University, more specifically called the Pioneer. The colony concerned is sometimes controlled by the government of a home country

18.
Bessarabia
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Bessarabia is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. The acquisition was among the Empires last territorial acquisitions in Europe, the newly acquired territories were organised as the Governorate of Bessarabia, adopting a name previously used for the southern plains, between the Dniester and the Danube rivers. In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the area constituted itself as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, bolshevik agitation in late 1917 and early 1918 resulted in the intervention of the Romanian Army, ostensibly to pacify the region. Soon after, the assembly declared independence, and then union with the Kingdom of Romania. The legality of acts was however disputed, most prominently by the Soviet Union. Axis-aligned Romania briefly recaptured the region in 1941 during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II. Part of the Gagauz-inhabited areas in the southern Bessarabia was organised in 1994 as a region within Moldova. According to the interpretation, the name Bessarabia derives from the Wallachian Basarab dynasty. Recent research has however cast doubt on this view, as the name was first applied to the territory by Western cartographers, showing up in local sources only in the second half of the 17th century. Furthermore, the use of the term to refer to the Moldavian lands near the Black Sea was explicitly rejected as a confusion by the early Moldavian chronicler Miron Costin. The confusion may have been caused by Polish references to Wallachia as Bessarabia, according to Dimitrie Cantemir, the name originally applied only to the part of the territory south of the Upper Trajanic Wall, somewhat bigger than current Budjak. The name Bessarabia may literally mean Bessi slaves after the Thracian tribe which was expelled by Trajan north of the Danube. The region is bounded by the Dniester to the north and east, the Prut to the west and the lower River Danube and it has an area of 45,630 km2. The area is mostly hilly plains with flat steppes and it is very fertile, and has lignite deposits and stone quarries. People living in the area grow sugar beet, sunflowers, wheat, maize, tobacco, wine grapes and they also raise sheep and cattle. Currently, the industry in the region is agricultural processing. The regions main cities are Chișinău, Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, historically called Cetatea Albă / Akkerman, other towns of administrative or historical importance include, Khotyn, Reni and Kilia, and Lipcani, Briceni, Soroca, Bălți, Orhei, Ungheni, Bender/Tighina and Cahul. In the late 14th century, the newly established Principality of Moldavia encompassed what became known as Bessarabia

19.
Voznesensk
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Voznesensk is a city in Mykolaiv Oblast of Ukraine and the administrative center of Voznesensk Raion. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance, population,35, 843 In 2001, the citys population was 42,634. The city was founded by Catherine II the Great in 1790 in a place of a previously existing Sokoly cossack settlement belonging to Buh Cossack Host, city expansion plans were carried out by prince Potemkin. However, the project was abandoned shortly after Catherines death in 1796, despite short period of accelerated development, Voznesensk managed to attract significant number of new inhabitants and cemented its positions as one of the centers of trade in Southern Ukraine. The Voznesensk train station is an important stop along the Odessa line, with direct trains available to cities including Kiev, Moscow, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk. The main bus station offers many destinations including buses to Kiev, Mykolayiv, local marshrutkas run from the center to all of the cities microregions and surrounding villages as well as every half-hour to Mykolayiv. Voznesensk has 9 schools, a lyceum, a technicum, Voznesensk has many available recreational opportunities. The city is situated along the Southern Buh river, where residents swim, fish, to the north of Voznesensk, near Pervomaisk, the Southern Buh flows through a canyon which is famous for its whitewater rafting and mountain climbing. The stadium in the center of Voznesensk features a football pitch, tennis court, track, the sports club VOSCO in the third microregion has an indoor basketball/tennis court as well as a weight training room. In fall 2012, a new complex in the center, Waterfall, opened. The famous artist, Yevgeny Kibrik, was born and grew up in Voznesensk, there is a museum featuring his art on Lenin St. Encyclopedia of Ukraine article

20.
Luxembourg
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Luxembourg /ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/, officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a landlocked country in western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east and its culture, people and languages are highly intertwined with its neighbours, making it essentially a mixture of French and Germanic cultures. It comprises two regions, the Oesling in the north as part of the Ardennes massif. With an area of 2,586 square kilometres, it is one of the smallest sovereign states in Europe, Luxembourg had a population of 524,853 in October 2012, ranking it the 8th least-populous country in Europe. As a representative democracy with a monarch, it is headed by a Grand Duke, Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Luxembourg is a country, with an advanced economy and the worlds highest GDP per capita. Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, OECD, United Nations, NATO, and Benelux, reflecting its political consensus in favour of economic, political. The city of Luxembourg, which is the capital and largest city, is the seat of several institutions. Luxembourg served on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2013 and 2014, around this fort, a town gradually developed, which became the centre of a state of great strategic value. In the 14th and early 15th centuries, three members of the House of Luxembourg reigned as Holy Roman Emperors, in the following centuries, Luxembourgs fortress was steadily enlarged and strengthened by its successive occupants, the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and the French. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Luxembourg was disputed between Prussia and the Netherlands and this arrangement was revised by the 1839 First Treaty of London, from which date Luxembourgs full independence is reckoned. In 1842 Luxembourg joined the German Customs Union, the King of the Netherlands remained Head of State as Grand Duke of Luxembourg, maintaining a personal union between the two countries until 1890. At the death of William III, the throne of the Netherlands passed to his daughter Wilhelmina and this allowed Germany the military advantage of controlling and expanding the railways there. In August 1914, Imperial Germany violated Luxembourgs neutrality in the war by invading it in the war against France and this allowed Germany to use the railway lines, while at the same time denying them to France. Nevertheless, despite the German occupation, Luxembourg was allowed to maintain much of its independence, in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, Luxembourgs neutrality was again violated when the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany entered the country, entirely without justification. A government in exile based in London supported the Allies, sending a group of volunteers who participated in the Normandy invasion. Luxembourg was liberated in September 1944, and became a member of the United Nations in 1945. Luxembourgs neutral status under the constitution formally ended in 1948, in 2005, a referendum on the EU treaty establishing a constitution for Europe was held

21.
Moldovans
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Moldovans are the largest population group of the Republic of Moldova, and a significant minority in Ukraine and Russia. This article refers primarily to the Romance language-speaking ethnic group native to Moldova, there is an ongoing controversy whether Moldovans are a fully fledged ethnic group or a regional subgroup of the Romanian ethnic group. Also, the Slavic neighbours called Moldovans Vlachs or Volokhs, a term used to refer to all native Romance speakers from Eastern Europe. Until the 1920s, historians generally considered Moldovans as a subgroup of the Romanian ethnos, if in the past, the term Moldovan has been used to refer to the population of the historical Principality of Moldavia. In 1918, Bessarabia joined the Kingdom of Romania, following a vote of Sfatul Ţării, the circumstance of the vote was itself complex, since the Romanian troops were present in Bessarabia at the request of the Sfatul Ţării as it was facing exterior threats and anarchy. The unified Romanian state promoted a common identity for all its Romanian-speaking inhabitants, in 1940, during World War II, Romania agreed to an ultimatum and ceded the region to the Soviet Union, which organized it into the Moldavian SSR. A poll conducted in the Republic of Moldova by IMAS-Inc Chișinău in October 2009 presented a detailed picture, the respondents were asked to rate the relationship between the identity of Moldovans and that of Romanians on a scale between 1 to 5. The results varied significantly among different categories of subjects, for instance, while 33% of the young respondents chose the same or very similar and 44% different or very different, among the senior respondents the corresponding figures were 18. 5% and 53%. A survey carried out in the Republic of Moldova in 1992 showed that 87% of the Romanian/Moldovan speakers chose to identify themselves as Moldovans, the major Moldovan political forces have diverging opinions regarding the identity of Moldovans. This contradiction is reflected in their stance towards the history that should be taught in schools. Governing forces such as the Liberal Party, Liberal Democratic Party, a significant number of intellectuals from the Bessarabia considered themselves part of the Romanian nation in the passing of time. Our brothers from Bukovina, Transylvania and Macedonia dont call themselves after the places they live in and that is what we should do as well. I think people come here not forced, but freely, for a return to their brothers and he is often quoted as saying We are Romanians, period. The 2004 census results reported that out of the 3,383,332 people living in Moldova,75. 81% declared themselves Moldovans, the 2001 census in Ukraine counted 258,600 Moldovans and 150,989 Romanians. In Russia,172,330 Moldovans have been counted in the 2002 Russian census and they are concentrated mostly in Moscow, but also in some rural areas in Kuban, southern Siberia, and the Russian Far East, where they were deported generations ago. Around 20,000 Moldovans live in Kazakhstan, mostly in the former capital Almaty, the largest share of the territory of the historical Principality of Moldavia together with all its formal capitals and the famous painted churches are located in Romania. The river Moldova now flows entirely through Romania, after the Russian annexation of Bessarabia in 1812, and Austrian annexation of Bukovina in 1775, the rest of Moldova united with Wallachia and formed the modern Romania. In 1998, Constantin Simirad, the mayor of Iaşi founded the Party of the Moldavians which later joined the Social Democratic Party

22.
Kiev
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Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population in July 2015 was 2,887,974, Kiev is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. It is home to many industries, higher education institutions. The city has an infrastructure and highly developed system of public transport. The citys name is said to derive from the name of Kyi, during its history, Kiev, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, passed through several stages of great prominence and relative obscurity. The city probably existed as a centre as early as the 5th century. A Slavic settlement on the trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople, Kiev was a tributary of the Khazars, until seized by the Varangians in the mid-9th century. Under Varangian rule, the city became a capital of the Kievan Rus, completely destroyed during the Mongol invasion in 1240, the city lost most of its influence for the centuries to come. It was a capital of marginal importance in the outskirts of the territories controlled by its powerful neighbours, first the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by Poland. The city prospered again during the Russian Empires Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, in 1917, after the Ukrainian National Republic declared independence from the Russian Empire, Kiev became its capital. From 1919 Kiev was an important center of the Armed Forces of South Russia and was controlled by the White Army. From 1921 onwards Kiev was a city of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was proclaimed by the Red Army, during World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, but quickly recovered in the post-war years, remaining the third largest city of the Soviet Union. During the countrys transformation to an economy and electoral democracy. Kievs armament-dependent industrial output fell after the Soviet collapse, adversely affecting science, Kiev emerged as the most pro-Western region of Ukraine where parties advocating tighter integration with the European Union dominate during elections. As a prominent city with a history, its English name was subject to gradual evolution. The early English spelling was derived from Old East Slavic form Kyjev, the name is associated with that of Kyi, the legendary eponymous founder of the city. Early English sources use various names, including Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, on one of the oldest English maps of the region, Russiae, Moscoviae et Tartariae published by Ortelius the name of the city is spelled Kiou. On the 1650 map by Guillaume de Beauplan, the name of the city is Kiiow, in the book Travels, by Joseph Marshall, the city is referred to as Kiovia

23.
Nikolai Krylenko
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Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician. Krylenko served in a variety of posts in the Soviet legal system, rising to become Peoples Commissar for Justice, Krylenko was an exponent of socialist legality and the theory that political considerations, rather than criminal guilt or innocence, should guide the application of punishment. Although a participant in the Show Trials and political repression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, following interrogation and torture by the NKVD, Krylenko confessed to extensive involvement in wrecking and anti-Soviet agitation. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court, in a trial lasting 20 minutes and he was a member of the short lived St. Petersburg Soviet during the Russian Revolution of 1905 and a member of the Bolshevik St. Petersburg Committee. He had to flee Russia in June 1906, but returned later that year, arrested by the Tsars secret police in 1907, he was released for lack of evidence, but soon exiled to Lublin without trial. Krylenko returned to St. Petersburg in 1909, finishing his degree and he left the RSDLP in 1911, but soon rejoined it. He was drafted in 1912 and made Second Lieutenant before being discharged in 1913, in early 1914, Krylenko learned that he might be re-arrested and fled to Austria. At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he had to move to Switzerland as a Russian national, in the summer of 1915 Vladimir Lenin sent Krylenko back to Russia to help rebuild the Bolshevik underground organization. In November 1915 Krylenko was arrested in Moscow as a dodger and, after a few months in prison. After the February Revolution of 1917 and the introduction of elected committees in the Russian armed forces, Krylenko was elected chairman of his regiments, on April 15 he was elected chairman of the 11th Armys committee. After Lenins return to Russia in April 1917, Krylenko adopted the new Bolshevik policy of opposition to the Provisional Government. He consequently had to resign his post on May 26,1917 for lack of support from members of the Army committee. In June 1917 Krylenko was made a member of the Bolshevik Military Organization and was elected to the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, at the Congress, he was elected to the permanent All-Russian Central Executive Committee from the Bolshevik faction. Krylenko left Petrograd for the High Command HQ in Mogilev on July 2 and he was kept in prison in Petrograd, but was released in mid-September after the Kornilov Affair. On October 16, ten days before the uprising, he reported to the Bolshevik Central Committee that the Petrograd military would support the Bolsheviks in case of an uprising. During the Bolshevik takeover on October 24 and 25, Krylenko was one of the leaders along with Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko. At the Second All Russian Congress of Soviets on October 25, Krylenko was made a Peoples Commissar, after the Provisional Commander in Chief, General Nikolai Dukhonin, refused to open peace negotiations with the Germans, Krylenko was appointed Commander in Chief on November 9. He started negotiations with the German army on November 12–13, Krylenko arrived at the High Command HQ in Mogilev on November 20 and arrested General Dukhonin, who was bayoneted and shot to death by Red Guards answering to Krylenko

24.
Dnipro
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Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk, is Ukraines fourth largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is 391 kilometres southeast of the capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, Dnipropetrovsk is the administrative centre of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance, the city was originally envisioned as the Russian Empires third capital city, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A vital industrial centre of Soviet Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk was one of the key centres of the nuclear, arms, in particular, it is home to the Yuzhmash, a major space and ballistic missile design bureau and manufacturer. Because of its industry, Dnipropetrovsk was a closed city until the 1990s. On 19 May 2016 the official name of the city was changed to Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk is a powerhouse of Ukraines business and politics as the native city for many of the countrys most important figures. Ukraines politics are still defined by the legacies of Leonid Kuchma, Pavlo Lazarenko, in some Anglophone media the city was also known as the Rocket City. In 1918, the Central Council of Ukraine proposed to change the name of the city to Sicheslav, however, in 1926 the city was renamed after Communist leader Grigory Petrovsky. Hence following the 2015 law on decommunization the city had to be renamed, on 19 May 2016 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to officially rename the city to the name Dnipro. A monastery was founded by Byzantine monks on Monastyrsky Island, probably in the 9th century, the Tatars destroyed the monastery in 1240. At the beginning of the 15th century, Tatar tribes inhabiting the right bank of the Dnieper were driven away by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, by the mid-15th century, the Nogai and the Crimean Khanate invaded these lands. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate agreed to a border along the Dnieper and it was in this time that a new force appeared, the free people, the Cossacks. They later became known as Zaporozhian Cossacks and this was a period of raids and fighting causing considerable devastation and depopulation in that area, the area became known as the Wild Fields. On the night of ¾ August 1635, the Cossacks of Ivan Sulyma captured the fort by surprise, burning it down, the fort was rebuilt by French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan for the Polish Government in 1638, and had a mercenary garrison. Kodak was captured by Zaporozhian Cossacks on 1 October 1648, and was garrisoned by the Cossacks until its demolition in accordance with the Treaty of the Pruth in 1711, the ruins of the Kodak are visible now. There is currently a project to restore it and create a tourist centre, under the Treaty of Pereyaslav of 1654, the territory became part of the Russian Empire. For practical purposes, the Prydniprovye lands remained a border area until the destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich in 1775. The Zaporozhian village of Polovytsia was founded in the late-1760s, between the settlements of Stari and Novi Kodaky and it was located at the present centre of the city to the West to district of Central Terminal and the Ozyorka farmers market

25.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century

26.
Vladivostok
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Vladivostok is a city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located at the head of the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russias borders with China and North Korea. The population of the city as of 2016 is 606,653, the city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. The name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as the ruler of the East—a name similar to Vladikavkaz which means the ruler of the Caucasus, the Japanese name of the city is Urajiosutoku. In Korean, the name is transliterated as Beulladiboseutokeu in South Korea, Ullajibosŭttokhŭ in North Korea, Qing China, which had just lost the Opium War with Britain, was unable to defend the region. The Manchu emperors of China, the Qing Dynasty, banned Han Chinese from most of Manchuria including the Vladivostok area —it was only visited by illegal gatherers of ginseng and sea cucumbers. On June 20,1860, the supply ship Manchur, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Alexey K. Shefner. Warrant officer Nikolay Komarov with 28 soldiers and two non-commissioned officers under his command were brought from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur by ship to construct the first buildings of the future city, the Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel Chinese from territory it controlled. Hostilities broke out around Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations, the Chinese resisted a Russian attempt to take Ashold Island and in response, two Russian military stations and three Russian towns were attacked by the Chinese whom the Russians failed to oust. An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the 1870s and 1890s, a telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasaki was opened in 1871. That same year a commercial port was relocated to Vladivostok from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, town status was granted on April 22,1880. A coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883, the first high school was opened in 1899. The citys economy was given a boost in 1916, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks took control of Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway in its entirety. During the Russian Civil War they were overthrown by the White-allied Czechoslovak Legion, the intervention ended in the wake of the collapse of the White Army and regime in 1919, with all Allied forces except the Japanese withdrawing by the end of 1920. In April 1920, the city came under the governance of the Far Eastern Republic. Vladivostok then became the capital of the Japanese-backed Provisional Priamurye Government, the withdrawal of Japanese forces in October 1922 spelled the end of the enclave, with Ieronim Uborevichs Red Army taking the city on October 25,1922. As the main base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. The city hosted the summit at which Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974, at the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers. In 2012, Vladivostok hosted the 24th APEC summit, leaders from the APEC member countries met at Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok

27.
Japan
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Japan is a sovereign island nation in Eastern Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asia Mainland and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea, the kanji that make up Japans name mean sun origin. 日 can be read as ni and means sun while 本 can be read as hon, or pon, Japan is often referred to by the famous epithet Land of the Rising Sun in reference to its Japanese name. Japan is an archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands. The four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, the country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions. Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one, the population of 127 million is the worlds tenth largest. Japanese people make up 98. 5% of Japans total population, approximately 9.1 million people live in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. Archaeological research indicates that Japan was inhabited as early as the Upper Paleolithic period, the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD. Influence from other regions, mainly China, followed by periods of isolation, from the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shoguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a period of isolation in the early 17th century. The Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan is a member of the UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the country has the worlds third-largest economy by nominal GDP and the worlds fourth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. It is also the worlds fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer, although Japan has officially renounced its right to declare war, it maintains a modern military with the worlds eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a country with a very high standard of living. Its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and the third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, in ancient China, Japan was called Wo 倭. It was mentioned in the third century Chinese historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms in the section for the Wei kingdom, Wa became disliked because it has the connotation of the character 矮, meaning dwarf. The 倭 kanji has been replaced with the homophone Wa, meaning harmony, the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, which is pronounced Nippon or Nihon and literally means the origin of the sun. The earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, at the start of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan introduced their country as Nihon

28.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci

29.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’

30.
Bern
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The city of Bern or Berne is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to by the Swiss as their Bundesstadt, or federal city. With a population of 141,762, Bern is the fourth-most populous city in Switzerland, the Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000, Bern is also the capital of the canton of Bern, the second-most populous of Switzerlands cantons. The official language in Bern is German, but the language is an Alemannic Swiss German dialect. In 1983, the old town in the centre of Bern became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bern is ranked among the top ten cities for the best quality of life. The etymology of the name Bern is uncertain and it has long been considered likely that the city was named after the Italian city of Verona, which at the time was known as Bern in Middle High German. As a result of the find of the Bern zinc tablet in the 1980s, it is now common to assume that the city was named after a pre-existing toponym of Celtic origin. The bear was the animal of the seal and coat of arms of Bern from at least the 1220s. The earliest reference to the keeping of bears in the Bärengraben dates to the 1440s. No archaeological evidence that indicates a settlement on the site of city centre prior to the 12th century has been found so far. In antiquity, a Celtic oppidum stood on the Engehalbinsel north of Bern, fortified since the second century BC, during the Roman era, a Gallo-Roman vicus was on the same site. The Bern zinc tablet has the name Brenodor, in the Early Middle Ages, a settlement in Bümpliz, now a city district of Bern, was some 4 km from the medieval city. The medieval city is a foundation of the Zähringer ruling family, according to 14th-century historiography, Bern was founded in 1191 by Berthold V, Duke of Zähringen. In 1218, after Berthold died without an heir, Bern was made an imperial city by the Goldene Handfeste of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. In 1353, Bern joined the Swiss Confederacy, becoming one of the eight cantons of the period of 1353 to 1481. The city grew out towards the west of the boundaries of the peninsula formed by the river Aare, the Zytglogge tower marked the western boundary of the city from 1191 until 1256, when the Käfigturm took over this role until 1345. It was, in turn, succeeded by the Christoffelturm until 1622, during the time of the Thirty Years War, two new fortifications – the so-called big and small Schanze – were built to protect the whole area of the peninsula

31.
Lausanne
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Lausanne is a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the capital and biggest city of the canton of Vaud. The city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva and it faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura Mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located 62 kilometres northeast of Geneva, Lausanne has a population of 146,372, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland, with the entire agglomeration area having 420,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva was over 1.2 million inhabitants in 2000, Lausanne is a focus of international sport, hosting the International Olympic Committee, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and some 55 international sport associations. It lies in a noted wine-growing region, the city has a 28-station metro system, making it the smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit system. Lausanne will host the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, by the 2nd century AD it was known as vikanor Lousonnensium and in 280 as lacu Lausonio. By 400 it was civitas Lausanna and in 990 it was mentioned as Losanna, after the fall of the Roman Empire, insecurity forced the transfer of Lausanne to its current centre, a hilly site that is easier to defend. The city which emerged from the camp was ruled by the Dukes of Savoy, then it came under Bern from 1536 to 1798 and a number of its cultural treasures, including the hanging tapestries in the Cathedral, were permanently removed. Lausanne has made a number of requests to recover them, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Lausanne became a place of refuge for French Huguenots. In 1729 a seminary was opened by Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan, by 1750 ninety pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely, this number would rise to four hundred. Official persecution ended in 1787, a faculty of Protestant theology was established at Montauban in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars, the citys status changed. In 1803, it became the capital of a newly formed Swiss canton, in 1964 the city hosted the Swiss National Exhibition, displaying its newly found confidence to host major international events. From the 1950s to 1970s a large number of Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese immigrated, settling mostly in the district of Renens. The city has served as a refuge for European artists, while under the care of a psychiatrist at Lausanne, T. S. Eliot composed most of his 1922 poem The Wasteland. Hemingway also visited from Paris with his wife during the 1920s, in fact, many creative people - such as Edward Gibbon, an historian, and Romantic era poets Shelley and Byron - have sojourned, lived, and worked in Lausanne or nearby. The city has been quiet, but in the late 1960s. Later demonstrations took place to protest against the high cinema prices, the most important geographical feature of the area surrounding Lausanne is Lake Geneva. Lausanne boasts a dramatic panorama over the lake and the Alps, in addition to its generally southward-sloping layout, the centre of the city is the site of an ancient river, the Flon, which has been covered since the 19th century

32.
Nikolai Bukharin
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Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician and prolific author on revolutionary theory. As a young man, he spent six years in exile, working closely with fellow exiles Vladimir Lenin, by late 1924, this had positioned Bukharin favourably as Joseph Stalins chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalins new theory and policy of Socialism in One Country. Together, Bukharin and Stalin ousted Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev from the party at the XVth Communist Party Congress in December 1927, from 1926 to 1929, Bukharin enjoyed great power as General Secretary of Cominterns executive committee. But Stalin’s decision to proceed with collectivisation drove the two men apart, and Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo in 1929. Arrested in February 1937, he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state and executed in March 1938, Nikolai Bukharin was born on September 27,1888 in Moscow. He was the son of two schoolteachers, Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharina. His childhood is recounted in his mostly autobiographic novel How It All Began. Bukharins political life began at the age of sixteen with his lifelong friend Ilya Ehrenburg when he participated in student activities at Moscow University related to the Russian Revolution of 1905 and he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, becoming a member of the Bolshevik faction. With Grigori Sokolnikov, he convened the 1907 national youth conference in Moscow, by age twenty, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the party. The committee was heavily infiltrated by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, as one of its leaders, Bukharin quickly became a person of interest to them. They married soon after their exile, in 1911, during the exile, he continued his education and wrote several books that established him as a major Bolshevik theorist in his 20s. His work, Imperialism and World Economy influenced Lenin, who borrowed from it in his larger and better known work, Imperialism. Nevertheless, he and Lenin often had hot disputes on issues and Bukharins closeness with the European Left. Bukharin developed an interest in the works of Austrian Marxists and non-Marxist economic theorists, such as Aleksandr Bogdanov, also while in Vienna in 1913, he helped the Georgian Bolshevik Joseph Stalin write an article, Marxism and the National Question, at Lenins request. In October 1916, while based in New York City, he edited the newspaper Novy Mir with Leon Trotsky, when Trotsky arrived in New York in January 1917, Bukharin was the first to greet him. At the news of the Russian Revolution of February 1917, exiled revolutionaries from around the world began to back to the homeland. Trotsky left New York on March 27,1917, sailing for St. Petersburg, Bukharin left New York in early April and returned to Russia by way of Japan, arriving in Moscow in early May 1917. Politically, the Bolsheviks in Moscow remained a minority to the Mensheviks

33.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time

34.
Sweden
–
Sweden, officially the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and Finland to the east, at 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third-largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of 10.0 million. Sweden consequently has a low density of 22 inhabitants per square kilometre. Approximately 85% of the lives in urban areas. Germanic peoples have inhabited Sweden since prehistoric times, emerging into history as the Geats/Götar and Swedes/Svear, Southern Sweden is predominantly agricultural, while the north is heavily forested. Sweden is part of the area of Fennoscandia. The climate is in very mild for its northerly latitude due to significant maritime influence. Today, Sweden is a monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a monarch as head of state. The capital city is Stockholm, which is also the most populous city in the country, legislative power is vested in the 349-member unicameral Riksdag. Executive power is exercised by the government chaired by the prime minister, Sweden is a unitary state, currently divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. Sweden emerged as an independent and unified country during the Middle Ages, in the 17th century, it expanded its territories to form the Swedish Empire, which became one of the great powers of Europe until the early 18th century. Swedish territories outside the Scandinavian Peninsula were gradually lost during the 18th and 19th centuries, the last war in which Sweden was directly involved was in 1814, when Norway was militarily forced into personal union. Since then, Sweden has been at peace, maintaining a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. The union with Norway was peacefully dissolved in 1905, leading to Swedens current borders, though Sweden was formally neutral through both world wars, Sweden engaged in humanitarian efforts, such as taking in refugees from German-occupied Europe. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995 and it is also a member of the United Nations, the Nordic Council, Council of Europe, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Sweden maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides health care. The modern name Sweden is derived through back-formation from Old English Swēoþēod and this word is derived from Sweon/Sweonas. The Swedish name Sverige literally means Realm of the Swedes, excluding the Geats in Götaland, the etymology of Swedes, and thus Sweden, is generally not agreed upon but may derive from Proto-Germanic Swihoniz meaning ones own, referring to ones own Germanic tribe

35.
Oslo
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Oslo is the capital and the most populous city in Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality, founded in the year 1040, and established as a kaupstad or trading place in 1048 by Harald Hardrada, the city was elevated to a bishopric in 1070 and a capital under Haakon V of Norway around 1300. Personal unions with Denmark from 1397 to 1523 and again from 1536 to 1814, after being destroyed by a fire in 1624, the city was moved closer to Akershus Fortress during the reign of Christian IV of Denmark and renamed Christiania in his honour. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838, following a spelling reform, it was known as Kristiania from 1877 to 1925, at which time its original Norwegian name was restored. Oslo is the economic and governmental centre of Norway, the city is also a hub of Norwegian trade, banking, industry and shipping. It is an important centre for industries and maritime trade in Europe. The city is home to companies within the maritime sector, some of which are among the worlds largest shipping companies, shipbrokers. Oslo is a city of the Council of Europe and the European Commission intercultural cities programme. Oslo is considered a city and ranked Beta World City in studies carried out by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group. It was ranked one in terms of quality of life among European large cities in the European Cities of the Future 2012 report by fDi magazine. A survey conducted by ECA International in 2011 placed Oslo as the second most expensive city in the world for living expenses after Tokyo. In 2013 Oslo tied with the Australian city of Melbourne as the fourth most expensive city in the world, as of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, while the population of the citys urban area was 942,084. The metropolitan area had an population of 1.71 million. The population was during the early 2000 increasing at record rates and this growth stems for the most part from international immigration and related high birth rates, but also from intra-national migration. The immigrant population in the city is growing faster than the Norwegian population. As of January 1,2016, the municipality of Oslo has a population of 658,390, the urban area extends beyond the boundaries of the municipality into the surrounding county of Akershus, the total population of this agglomeration is 942,084. To the north and east, wide forested hills rise above the city giving the location the shape of a giant amphitheatre. The urban municipality of Oslo and county of Oslo are two parts of the entity, making Oslo the only city in Norway where two administrative levels are integrated

36.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him

37.
February Revolution
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The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917

38.
Russian Republic
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According to the Constitution, the Russian Federation is divided into 85 federal subjects,22 of which are republics. Most of the republics represent areas of ethnicity, although there are several republics with Russian majority. The indigenous ethnic group of a republic that gives it its name is referred to as the titular nationality, due to decades of internal migration inside Russia, each nationality is not necessarily a majority of a republics population. Republics differ from other subjects of Russia in that they have the right to establish their own official language and have their own constitution. Other federal subjects, such as krais and oblasts, are not explicitly given this right, the level of actual autonomy granted to such political units varies but is generally quite extensive. The parliamentary assemblies of such republics have often enacted laws which are at odds with the federal constitution, the republics executives tend to be very powerful. However, this autonomy was lessened considerably under Russian President Vladimir Putin, in addition, Putin strengthened the position of the republics legislatures, while weakening their executives power. The Presidents nomination must be accepted by the republics parliament, there are secessionist movements in most republics, but these are generally not very strong. However, there was support for secession among Tatars, Bashkirs, Yakuts. On March 18,2014, the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol were joined by treaty to the Russian Federation, much of the international community and the Ukrainian government do not recognize Crimeas accession to Russia and consider Crimea an integral part of Ukraine. After the dissolution of the USSR, each republic was succeeded by a republic with a similar name. Several autonomous oblasts have become republics as well, the expression autonomous republic is still sometimes used for the republics of Russia

39.
Southwestern Krai
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The territory corresponded to the Kiev Military District. However a position of Kiev Military Governor existed since 1796, in 1889 the Governorate General original jurisdiction of only three gubernias was restored. It existed in this form until 1915 when the unit was abolished. Fyodor Trepov was the last General Governor of Kiev, in 1912 the Kholm Governorate, a former governorate of the Congress Poland, was detached from it, and attached to the Kiev General Governorate

40.
House of Romanov
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The Romanovs achieved prominence as boyars of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, later the Tsardom of Russia. In 1613, following years of interregnum, the zemsky sobor offered the Russian crown to Mikhail Romanov and he acceded to the throne as Michael I, becoming the first Tsar of Russia from the House of Romanov. His grandson Peter I established the Russian Empire and transformed the country into a continental power through a series of wars, the direct male line of the Romanovs came to an end when Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762. After an era of crisis, the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg which reigned in Denmark, ascended the throne in 1762 with Peter III. All rulers from the middle of the 18th century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that branch, though officially known as the House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and Oldenburg dynasties are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. In early 1917 the Romanov dynasty had 65 members,18 of whom were killed by the Bolsheviks, the remaining 47 members went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior, surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, since 1991, the succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, largely due to disagreements over the validity of dynasts marriages. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia claims to hold the title of empress in pretense with her child, George Mikhailovich. There is also a rival non-Romanov claim put forth by Prince Karl Emich of the House of Leiningen supported by the Monarchist Party, according to the Almanach de Gotha, the name of Russias ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III was Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. However, the name Romanov and House of Romanov were often used in references to the Russian imperial family. The coat of arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, after the February Revolution all members of the imperial family were given the surname Romanov by special decree of the Provisional Government of Russia. Their earliest common ancestor is one Andrei Kobyla, attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of Semyon I of Moscow, later generations assigned to Kobyla an illustrious pedigree. An 18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Prussian prince Glanda Kambila, indeed, one of the leaders of the Old Prussian rebellion of 1260–1274 against the Teutonic order was named Glande. His actual origin may have been less spectacular, not only is Kobyla Russian for mare, some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobylas sons, Feodor, a member of the boyar Duma of Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka and his descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin, which family later split into two branches, Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the family became known as Yakovlev. The family fortunes soared when Romans daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina, married Ivan IV, since her husband had assumed the title of tsar, which literally means Caesar, on 16 January 1547, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa of Russia. Her mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivans character for the worse, suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, Tsar Ivan started a reign of terror against them

41.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
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The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, that ended Russias participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk, after two months of negotiations, the treaty was forced on the Bolshevik government by the threat of further advances by German and Austrian forces. According to the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russias commitments to the Triple Entente alliance, in the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic States to Germany, they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, furthermore, Russia agreed to pay six billion German gold marks in reparations. Historian Spencer Tucker says, The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator, Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, as Germans refused to recognize the existence of any Polish representatives, which in turn led to Polish protests. When Germans later complained that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was too harsh on them, the treaty was effectively terminated in November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the Allies. By 1917, Germany and Imperial Russia were stuck in a stalemate on the Eastern Front of World War I, at the time, the Russian economy nearly collapsed under the strain of the war effort. The large numbers of war casualties and persistent food shortages in the urban centers brought about civil unrest, known as the February Revolution. The Russian Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar, decided to continue the war on the Entente side, the pro-war Provisional Government was opposed by the self-proclaimed Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, dominated by leftist parties. Its Order No.1 called for a mandate to soldier committees rather than army officers. The Soviet started to form its own power, the Red Guards. The position of the Provisional Government led the Germans to offer support to the Russian opposition, the Communist Party in particular, in April 1917, Germany allowed Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland and offered him financial help. Throughout 1917, Bolsheviks spread defeatist and revolutionary propaganda, called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, following the disastrous failure of the Kerensky Offensive, discipline in the Russian army deteriorated completely. Soldiers would disobey orders, often under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, Russian and German soldiers occasionally left their positions and fraternized. The defeat and ongoing hardships of war led to anti-government riots in Petrograd headed by the Bolsheviks, several months later, on 7 November, Red Guards seized the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government in what is known as the October Revolution. The newly established Soviet government decided to end Russias participation in the war with Germany, on 26 October 1917, Vladimir Lenin signed the Decree on Peace, which was approved by the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies. The Decree called upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start negotiations for peace. Leon Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in the new Bolshevik government, on 15 December 1917, an armistice between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was concluded and fighting stopped

42.
Leon Trotsky
–
Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested

43.
Joseph Stalin
–
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues

44.
Red Army
–
The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War

The Russian Empire (Russian: Россійская Имперія) was an empire that existed from 1721, following the end of the Great …

Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia as the Russian Empire in 1721 and became its first emperor. He instituted sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.